Family:Henry Allen and Sarah Hill (2)

Evidence Pointing to Sarah Hill as Wife of Henry Allen of Milford

"John Hill … died June 8, 1689. According to Savage, his will was made in September preceding his death, but [the writer's] copy gives the date Sept. 28, 1680. It was proved June 17, 1689, and names his wife Katharine, his sons John and James, his daughter Tapping, and the children of his deceased daughters Sarah and Elizabeth, of whom Frances Allen was to receive a double portion. On the second Monday of June, 1695, the following record was made (New Haven County Court Records, I., 232): 'The legacies yet due out of y^e estate of John Hill of Guilford deceased is 9lb 20s which is to be distributed to 13 grandchildren of the deceased the eldest o£ them viz. Frances Allen to have 1lb 5s 5d as a double portion, and each of the rest to have 12s 20d as a single portion to every of them.' …

Sarah² and Elizabeth² Hill (John¹) seem to have married and died before their father's will was made in 1680. One of them had married _____ Allen, and had had a daughter Frances, who in 1695 was older than the other living children of these daughters. Henry Allen, of Milford, Conn., according to Savage (I., 31), had wife Sarah, who died in 1680, and a daughter Frances, born in 1676. Orcutt (History of Stratford, II., 1115) gives only John (not mentioned by Savage) and Frances _____ who married, in 1704, John Hall of Middletown, whose heirs in 1742 were Joseph Cornell and wife Elizabeth, Joseph Sage, Jr., and wife Mary, James Ward and wife Abigail, and Samuel Stow and wife Mary, all of Middletown—as the children of Henry AlIen, so it would appear that the four children named by Savage as born before Frances, 1676, died before John¹ Hill's will was made."^[2]

In order for this argument to be valid, Frances would have to have been older than brother Henry Allen. There is sufficient room between Mercy, born October 1671 and Henry, born May 1674, for Frances to have been an unrecorded birth between them even though she was not baptized, for whatever reason, until 1676. It is also possible, however unlikely, that Henry Allen was born to a different family. In any event, the foregoing discussion makes it clear that Frances Allen was the eldest surviving grandchild of John Hill of Guilford when the distribution was made in 1695.

1. ↑ George Allen, in Anderson, Robert Charles; George F. Sanborn; and Melinde Lutz Sanborn. The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England, 1634-1635. (Boston, Massachusetts: NEHGS, 1999-2011)
   1:29.

   Henry (Allen) … m. (1) by 1663 Sarah Hill (eldest child b. Milford 21 October 1663 [FOOF 1:13]; Sarah Allen, wife of Henry, admitted to Milford church and baptized, 7 [worn] 1666 [TAG 16:33, citing Milford church records]; Jacobus called her daughter of John Hill of Guilford, without citing evidence [TAG 20:Supplement:3; see also NEHGR 57:251]).

2. ↑ ^2.0 2.1 Hill, Edwin A. Notes on the Family of John Hill of Guilford, Conn. New England Historical and Genealogical Register. (New England Historic Genealogical Society, Jul 1903)
   57:251.